Friday, September 3, 2010

Friday TV/Media Notes

Here are some notes heading into the NASCAR tripleheader weekend:

Don't forget that Rick Allen, Phil Parsons and Michael Waltrip are calling a Camping World Truck Series race from Kentucky Speedway Friday night on SPEED. Qualifying at 6PM, pre-race show with Krista Voda at 7:30PM and live race coverage at 8PM ET.

Because of the truck race, there is no Trackside on SPEED this Friday night. It can't move to Saturday because the Nationwide Series race is also at night.

Mike Joy is back in the SPEED TV booth on Saturday calling practice and qualifying for the Sprint Cup and Nationwide Series from Atlanta, GA. He will be joined by the usual suspects in Larry McReynolds and Jeff Hammond. John Roberts will be hosting the NASCAR Live shows between sessions.

College football has started, so this is the first weekend where the Nationwide Series pre-race show on ESPN2 at 6:30PM is three hours after kick-off of a game. Needless to say, be ready to see it joined in progress. Another football game is scheduled for 10PM immediately after the race is supposed to be over.

Nicole Briscoe and Ricky Craven are handling the NASCAR Now weekend studio shows on ESPN2. Shannon Spake and David Newton will be reporting from the Atlanta Motor Speedway. Show times on our TV listings on the left side of the page.

ESPN is once again having the TV team double-up this weekend. Marty Reid, Dale Jarrett and Andy Petree will call both the Saturday Nationwide and the Sunday Sprint Cup Series events. Allen Bestwick, Brad Daugherty and Rusty Wallace will be riding it out in the Infield Pit Studio. Yes, Tim Brewer and the Tech Garage will also be there!

On Thursday's edition of Race Hub, Bob Dillner said testing would be returning to the Daytona International Speedway this year. With new pavement, there had to be something done and open testing for teams in all three series seems to be the solution. Thatsracin.com reporter Jim Utter passed along that he heard January 17 - 21 are the tentative dates.

There is a new list of events available for fans in Las Vegas during the banquet weekend in the post-season. Click here for the scenedaily.com page link for the details. Hopefully, some more sponsor-driven events will be added.

There is no daytime NASCAR TV coverage on Friday. We will be live blogging the truck race Friday night, please join us then. In the meantime, please feel free to leave your comments on the topics above. Thanks for stopping by.

10 comments:

I have mixed feelings about the testing thing. They have to test Daytona, no question, because of the new pavement. I also think that drives excitement on TV for the new season (for those of us who like to watch, say Racehub at the track while they're practicing....). But if they're going to bring back more of it; it needs to somehow keep the playing field even with the big $$$ teams. Mayabe limit it somehow. It'll be interesting to see what they do. I'll be back at 6 for qualifying, I expect.

Bring testing back! Sorry but this is the big boy league and if you can't keep up there is always Trucks and Nationwide to turn to. Though a testing cap is reasonable and needed I agree. If your going to cap it though, it needs to be a hard cap and the test sessions need to be NASCAR sanctioned. Perhaps NASCAR holds 6 test sessions at tracks for the season and you can only attend 3 of the other 5 with Daytona being mandatory. Maybe allow 3 extra sessions at other tracks, even non-sanctioned ones. It favors multi-car teams but if your willing to put that many cars on the track to start with, you paid to have the advantage. Point to you big teams.

Or do the DW approach and open some tracks up a day early for open testing/practice.

But enough on that, college football... JD yes there is a game scheduled after the race, but unlike with NASCAR, ESPN has a choice to bump the game to an online feed where they can't with NASCAR, right?! Ultimately, I think much of this again goes back to NASCAR's brainless suits not having ANY clue how to use the internet and use it to their advantage. Instead they are more concerned with their pockets and restricting access to stuff and allowing a network which competes against the rest to control all online rights. Maybe after 2014 we'll see change for the good, but it's a shame we have to wait that long to see it.

Curious to see how Joy does, he was off much of the season on FOX, maybe after some time off he can generate some of that old Mike Joy we know and love since he is minus DW in the booth!!!!

Some of the big money teams even complained about how much they spent on testing. Probably a fortune at HMS. But even some of the small teams said they needed to test, though they obviously might have to do it on a smaller scale. I think that 'day early' would work in a lot of places. Might be a bonus for the tracks too.